Page 70 of Trapped With the Secret Agent

Peter ignored her little dig at him and continued with the lesson, showing her as many signals as he thought she could remember. As she practiced them, Peter realized the silent language of warriors didn’t suit her slender arms and small hands. She should be holding flowers, the hand of a child, or a million other everyday, commonplace, normal things, but learning how to understand and perform the silent language of war wasn’t one of them.

His reaction bothered him, but he wasn’t sure why. She needed this information.

Peter corrected the position of her hand for one of the hand signals then froze. The echo of gunfire ricocheted through the tunnel.

“Crap.”

Georgia turned to stare at him in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s too soon for a fire fight.” He looked at his watch. “It’s only been forty minutes since they left. They can’t have disarmed the bomb and gotten to the hostages already. Something’s gone wrong.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“No, I don’t.” He paused, staring at the floor. “But I’m going to find out.” He started walking to the door.

“But Peter—” Georgia’s protest died on her lips and she ran to catch up to him. “Is this what Stokes meant when he said you were his ace in the hole?”

He ignored her question, stopping a couple feet from the portal. He took her by the shoulders, being careful to whisper now that they were so close to the entrance to the embassy. “I want you to stay here.”

Her eyes widened in panic. “I can’t stay here by myself.”

“Yes, you can. You can do it, Georgia, you have to. I don’t dare take you with me, you’re too big a liability.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed, first he makes love to her in this dingy place and now— “You’re a huge distraction for me. My first instinct will be to protect you, and there is a good chance that I won’t be able to do that and help the SEAL team at the same time. Do you understand?”

“I think so.” She looked down at their feet, standing so close together. When she glanced up again, she was smiling a little. “Yes, I understand.”

“Good.” He kissed her hard, then set her away from him.

He turned off his flashlight and set it on the floor, then opened the door almost as carefully as the SEALs did and disappeared through it. There was barely a hiss as the latch dropped back into place.

* * *

Georgia stared at theclosed door for a second before the sound of more gunfire had her jittery hands flashing the light around the tunnel. It almost sounded like it was coming from behind her, but it was just an echo, filtering through the walls and amplified by the tunnel.

Wait a second. If she could hear gunfire so well maybe she could hear what else was going on.

Georgia walked toward the sound, listening hard for any trace of voices. After about twenty feet she stopped. She could hear footsteps, more than one set, one running, another walking, and yes, voices. Speaking English. She tilted her head in the direction the voices were coming from. They sounded like they were right on top of her. She couldn’t make out all the words and moved a little farther. There. Clear as a bell.

“—we’re pinned down near the outer wall by fire from the roof.”

There was a pause and Georgia held her breath, hoping to hear more.

“No, sir. It’s a turkey shoot. They’ve got spotlights up there. If we move, we’re dead.”

One hand flew up to cover her mouth in horror. Something had gone wrong, but what? And what would happen to Peter? He didn’t know that he was walking into a mess that could get him killed.

She whirled around and ran to the door but stopped herself from opening it at the last second.

How could she help? What could she possibly do to make things better? She didn’t have a gun, and even if she did, she doubted she could shoot anyone. But she had to do something.

Visions of Peter getting shot flashed through her head and she shivered. No, she couldn’t let that happen.

Georgia took a firm rein on her breathing and concentrated on calming herself. She could fall apart later. Right now, she had to figure out how to help Peter and the SEALs.

She hurried back to the spot where she could hear the voices best and listened as they continued to call for help; only the rest of the team was in just as big of trouble. Stuck, hiding under the stairs in the lobby, bullets coming at them from two directions, yelling that the terrorists had brought in spotlights so they couldn’t sneak away under the cover of darkness.

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